Why has cultural silvanism favoured large populations?
With more people you can make more cultures. More cultures equal more options, and therefore more freedom. Cultural diversity was usually seen as more important than excessive individual wealth levels.
Wouldn’t that imply that cultural silvanism leads to huge populations living in poverty?
Poverty causes a radical decrease in options, which is generally considered to be undesirable. Involuntary poverty was quickly abolished after the Black War, at least for regular people living in base reality. Voluntary poverty existed, as well as poverty within certain simulations, and for people who don’t care about being poor, for example type 1 blissies.
Could most people afford a small star-ship at least, then?
Yes, simple star-ships the size of a small house. Most people rarely used such small star-ships, since traveling with those tends to get rather lonely and boring. Chartering larger space craft was generally seen as much preferable.
How did the economy work after the Black War exactly? How are resources allocated among members within V factions?
The economy as a whole is optimized to serve the ideological purposes of the respective V faction. It is the task of optimizers , or opts for short, to run economic simulations of outcomes depending on different allocations of resources, and then to implement the allocation that promises the best results. Based on these computed allocations, individuals and organizations are allocated resource budgets for a specific period of time which can be used freely or bound to a certain objective. Usually, the reasons for increases or decreases of those budgets are relatively in-transparent, because they are the result of highly complex projections. Those budgets are generally accepted to depend in part of your ability to perform the tasks assigned to you well, but also on your “luck” to play an important role in the economic simulations that provide the basis for your budget, for reasons that mostly lie outside of your own control.
That sounds a lot like a planned economy. How certain is it that the simulations actually predict the best desired results?
The performance of these simulations is evaluated by certain evaluation periods in which the budgets are allocated pretty much randomly. The economic performance during these evaluation periods is then compared to the economic performance of a regular simulation period to be able to ascertain how much benefits the simulations provide. The fidelity and amount of the simulations is increased until it reaches the threshold where adding more fidelity would cost more than it would improve the economy. Evaluation periods become increasingly rare over time, as the economy as a whole gains more experience. Nevertheless, they are occasionally introduced deliberately to insert some chaos and disruption into the system and shake things up in the hope that this will give rise to otherwise unlikely innovations.
I can’t see that there is a lot of political approval for such evaluation periods. Sounds like they are nothing more than artificial crisis situations.
A prolonged absence of crises breeds complacency. The evaluation periods are often seen as necessary evil, which facilitate the development of anti-fragility or at least resilience.
I can see the point of organising the economy like that. It still feels at least somewhat insane, but I suspect that it’s overall much less insane than the economic systems we have used so far. But what about markets in that system you envision? What role do they play, if they exist at all?
Markets exist, but are mostly automated. AI agents usually prompt you to purchase or sell goods or services. Most transactions happen that way. People just affirm or reject those prompts generated by economic AI agents. Taking economic initiative is usually considered to be a questionable indulgence, unless you are actually an expert in business and economics.
Do people get punished for not following those AI generated suggestions?
If you reject a lot of suggestions, they get re-calibrated until they are more aligned with your personal preferences. However, it can be expected that this will a negative impact on your next budget. Alternatively it could improve it, since you signal that you are not an obedient slave to the system. So, rejecting economic suggestions is risky, but might have a positive effect. Most people usually accept the vast majority of suggestions, since they usually don’t feel too adventurous.
Can people opt out of this AI mediated economy altogether?
Yes, sure. But interacting with the economy without AI assistance is comparatively uncomfortable, tedious, and usually rather pointless, unless it’s a deliberate choice of your culture.
Can’t people just replicate or materialise the goods they want?
Yes, but there are two important constraints on that. Creating goods that way always comes with a certain increase in entropy. Those are one time costs that you would need to pay from your budget. Also, the energy and matter a good consist of are removed from the control of others while you possess it. That is generally considered to represent a negative externality, so you need to pay a continuous fee on all of your possessions. This disincentivizes hoarding of goods and causes people to store only those goods which they use frequently.